Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Palin's Mrs. Oswald Moment

The dots connect between Sarah Palin's self-absorbed interview on the Tuscon shootings and the response of Lee Harvey Oswald's mother after the death of her son who killed JFK and was gunned down two days later.

In Washington to testify before the Warren Commission investigating the assassination, Mrs. Oswald told reporters she was miffed about not being invited to the White House by Lady Bird Johnson.

"After all," Mrs. Oswald reasoned, "her husband became President and my son died in the same incident."

Now Palin tells Fox News, “Peaceful dissent and discussion about ideas, that is what makes America exceptional. We won’t allow that to be stifled by a tragic event in Arizona.”

All this is a kind of eerie reversion to the gruesome old joke, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?"

Mrs. Oswald's "incident" and Palin's "tragic event" come from the same egomaniacal cloth in situations where shamed silence might have been more appropriate. Or as Conservative commentator Joe Scarborough puts it:

"We get it, Sarah Palin. You’re not morally culpable for the tragic shooting in Tucson, Ariz....even if we were stunned that you would whine about yourself on Facebook as a shattered family prepared to bury their 9-year-old girl."

But Palin is having none of that. "I am not going to sit down," she says. "I am not going to shut up."

In the name of sweet reason, let's hope she keeps that promise. Mother Oswald would have been proud, and the rest of us will be pleased to see Palin upholding her tradition.

Update: "Palin Shoots Herself in the Foot," say pollsters: "So with a strong majority of Americans thinking that Palin had no responsibility for the shootings and almost half of them thinking the media mistreats her, she was in a more sympathetic position with voters across the country last week than she had found herself in a long time. And then she made the video..."

2 comments:

Sarah Palin has the freedom to say or publish as she pleases. She removed the crosshair poster from her web site the day of the shooting. Did she associate herself and the poster with the assassin? Or was the removal just a coincidence? Maybe she will re-post it again. It would make a good conversation piece if she is contemplating running for office. I don't know why she took it down, any more than I know why she would put it up in the first place. Maybe she did neither. Maybe it was done without her knowledge. There may be a thousand reasons Sarah Palin decided to take the target poster down. If it was okay, in her thinking, the day before the murders, why would it not be okay today? The context has not changed if I understand her reasoning. Anyway, a Glock does not even have crosshairs.Jared Loughner was arrested for the shooting. Sarah Palin did not shoot anybody. But every time Sarah Palin appears in public, many of can not help but remember a little girl who did not have any crosshairs over her name on a map.